The main objective of a driver operating a vehicle is to reach a destination safely in a reasonable amount of time. Secondary objectives can include maintaining the condition of the vehicle, and providing comfort and entertainment to passengers. Completing these objectives may require a variety of information, such as information about restaurants, rest areas, hotels, service stations, entertainment establishments, etc.
Typically, there are multiple options, and the options selected by the driver can depend on cost, quality, location, and/or driver preferences. Conventionally, the information is delivered by commercial roadside signs or locally broadcast commercial advertisements, which cannot anticipate any particular driver's preferences or needs.
A much better approach is to target the delivery to a specific consumer. Typically, targeted delivery is achieved by recommendation systems using collaborative or content-based filtering, such as Google AdWords®, Microsoft Bing® Ads. However those recommendation systems were not designed for in-vehicle use. Conventional systems use large database of consumer buying patterns, such as information about previously purchased or used products. Interacting with such online systems can be complex and extremely distracting.
Prior art information delivery typically focus on only commercial advertisements, see U.S. 20120101903, “Apparatus and Method for Mobile Intelligent Advertizing Service Based on Mobile user Contextual Matching,” U.S. 20120221413, “Intelligent Presentation of Advertising with Navigation,” U.S. 20110066501, “Apparatus and Method for Rendering Advertising Contents on a Mobile Communication Device,” and U.S. 20090298483 “Method and Apparatus for Selecting Advertisements and Determining Constraints for Presenting the Advertisements on Mobile Communication Devices.”